Coming back out into the Cannes night from the ceremony, you walked straight into cigarette smoke rising from the terrace (we are in France, bien sûr), voices everywhere, people spilling down the steps. Lucas Bravo and William Abadie spotted each other in the crowd, two “Emily in Paris” co-stars grabbed each other by the shoulders amid the chaos at the Palais exit. Gustavsson was somewhere too, moving through it with a security guard fixed to her side, posted there by Cartier for the evening, given the necklace she was wearing—its value not the sort of thing you leave to chance at an event like this.
Every time I returned to my room, something new appeared: a Dyson fan, resistance bands, a carefully chosen beauty product; all gifts from the hotel to the guests. After the photographers, the crowds, the warmth of the Palais, and the smoke of the terrace, pulling the door closed behind me felt like stepping into a different country. Outside, the city blazed on. In here, nothing.
Wednesday Morning: After the (Media) Storm
By Wednesday, the hotel had settled into its festival rhythm. At Riviera, the ground-floor restaurant, Elijah Wood and Peter Jackson, collaborators on Lord of the Rings, were deep in breakfast conversation, Jackson magnificent in a Hawaiian shirt, the two of them quietly processing his Honorary Palme d’Or win from the night before. Out by the pool, a L’Oréal shoot was already underway, Bravo posed in the corridor alongside the garden, and makeup artists moved between suites with kit bags over their shoulders, the hotel operating as a full production hub as much as a place to sleep.
The sun was doing its thing over the Croisette, the same confident light that had announced the festival two days earlier now presiding over a city fully in its stride. As I made my way to the airport, the Carlton was already resetting: fresh flowers in the lobby, another round of champagne heading upstairs, a new wave of faces at the front desk. The team had barely caught their breath when the whole machine was spinning up again, as if the last 48 hours had been nothing but a warm-up. For the hotel that started it all, two weeks of this is not the exception.